Against Nature (Penguin Classics)
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Product Description
The hero of this curious novel is des Esseintes, a neurasthenic aristocrat who has turned his back on the vulgarity of modern life and retreated to an isolated country villa. Here, accompanied only by a couple of silent servants, he pursues his obsessions with exotic flowers, rare gems, and complex perfumes and embarks on a series of increasingly strange aesthetic experiments, starting with the decision to give his giant pet tortoise a jewel-encrusted shell...
About the Author
Born in Paris in 1848 and acknowledged as a principal architect of the fin-de-siècle imagination, Joris-Karl Huysmans was a career civil servant who wrote ten novels, most notably A Rebours (1884) and Là-Bas (1891). Huysmans died in 1907.
Robert Baldick (d.1972) translated widely from the French and wrote a biography of Huysmans.
Patrick McGuinness is a Fellow and Tutor in French at St Anne's College, Oxford, and editor of Symbolism, Decadence and the Fin de Siecle (Exeter UP, 2000).
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First Sentence
Over two months elapsed before Des Esseintes could immerse himself in the peaceful silence of his house at Fontenay, for purchases of all sorts still kept him perambulating the streets and ransacking the shops from one end of Paris to the other. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Over two months elapsed before Des Esseintes could immerse himself in the peaceful silence of his house at Fontenay, for purchases of all sorts still kept him perambulating the streets and ransacking the shops from one end of Paris to the other. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a very interesting novel; not only in terms of its content, but in terms of its function as a touchstone of decadent 1890s English literature. Indeed, it's rumored to be the novel which corrupts Dorian Gray in the Wilde novel of 1891.
A novel with only one main character sounds a bit strange. And it is. But rather than the focus being on linear plot, action or conventional emotions, the reader of this book - whilst carrying out their own solitary activity of reading - seems to form a symbiotic relationship with the book's protagonist, Des Esseintes. Reading about the things that this French loner does purely out of boredom is fascinating; indeed, the very act of reading about his mad experiments and activities gives the reader as great a hedonistic pleasure as it gives Des Esseintes himself by doing these things.
Whilst most people today associate money with being able to have a nice house, eat well, drive nice cars etc, this fictional account of a bored, rich man sees a much more fascinating way to toy with boredom and money. The translation is great, capturing Huysmans' tone and sentiment perfectly.
Reading this book will change your life.
A novel with only one main character sounds a bit strange. And it is. But rather than the focus being on linear plot, action or conventional emotions, the reader of this book - whilst carrying out their own solitary activity of reading - seems to form a symbiotic relationship with the book's protagonist, Des Esseintes. Reading about the things that this French loner does purely out of boredom is fascinating; indeed, the very act of reading about his mad experiments and activities gives the reader as great a hedonistic pleasure as it gives Des Esseintes himself by doing these things.
Whilst most people today associate money with being able to have a nice house, eat well, drive nice cars etc, this fictional account of a bored, rich man sees a much more fascinating way to toy with boredom and money. The translation is great, capturing Huysmans' tone and sentiment perfectly.
Reading this book will change your life.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Huysmans' fantastic novel has been influential on writers when it first came out and up to the present day, after all you can obviously see the beginnings of such novels as 'Perfume' amongst its pages. The only main character, Des Esseintes has lived a life that mirrors Dorian Gray, and Dorian indeed reads this book in The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics). You do get glimpses in this novel of Des Esseintes' hedonistic lifestyle before he seeks 'rest'. Told by his doctors that his lifestyle will kill him, Des Esseintes retires into seclusion and loneliness. However even here his life is full of eccentricity and dissipation.
Des Esseintes changes one lifestyle for another and contemplates upon a series of subjects in his new home that he has bizarrely furnished and fitted out. A weird and captivating tale this book is now a cult classic and has held people enthralled since its first publication, indeed it is difficult to put it down, and remains in the mind long after. As I wrote in my review for The Damned (Penguin Classics), Huysmans can write about literally anything and hold you in captivation, truly he was one of the worlds greatest writers. In this book mention is made of Barbey D'Aurevilly, and the bookLes Diaboliques: She Devils (Empire of the Senses). This is a book of short stories and is well worth a read.
Along with the story and an introduction you also get here Huysmans' preface written 20 years later, and also reviews and responses to the novel from such luminaries as Oscar Wilde, Emile Zola and Barbey D'Aurevilly, amognst others.
Des Esseintes changes one lifestyle for another and contemplates upon a series of subjects in his new home that he has bizarrely furnished and fitted out. A weird and captivating tale this book is now a cult classic and has held people enthralled since its first publication, indeed it is difficult to put it down, and remains in the mind long after. As I wrote in my review for The Damned (Penguin Classics), Huysmans can write about literally anything and hold you in captivation, truly he was one of the worlds greatest writers. In this book mention is made of Barbey D'Aurevilly, and the bookLes Diaboliques: She Devils (Empire of the Senses). This is a book of short stories and is well worth a read.
Along with the story and an introduction you also get here Huysmans' preface written 20 years later, and also reviews and responses to the novel from such luminaries as Oscar Wilde, Emile Zola and Barbey D'Aurevilly, amognst others.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
To understand and appreciate this book, which by its very nature seems to reject the reader, or perhaps to withdraw from the reader any semblance of the forms of contact and intimacy that are the usual business of one person writing and another person reading the words, is to accept that the process by which we come together in this case is ultimately bizarre. Huysmans rejected the naturalism of his compatriot Emile Zola and turned it on its head. Rather than drawing from human nature and seeking to understand humanity, Huysmans found his oeuvre with the paintings of Gustav Moreau and he was linked to the heady extremes of symbolist poetry by the likes of Mallarme and Moreas.
Against Nature displays a profound disgust for women as well as an effete sensibility that rejected `normality' and convention. Huysman's erudite encapsulations of Classical history and literature are marked by a strong sense of the privileged position he was able, by means of his wealth, to attain. This seam of extremism played itself out via the Symbolist movement and it (arguably) reached its peak in the poetry of Maeterlinck and in the art of (among others) Arnold Bocklin and Ferdinand Hodler. As such it is one of the strangest movements in the Modernist era, linking figures as various as Baudelaire and Edward Burne-Jones. The styles of the Symbolist painters varied considerably, but they shared many of the same themes particularly a fascination with the mystical and the visionary. The erotic, the perverse, death and debauchery were of particular interest for the Symbolists. The leading figures of the movement included the two French men, Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin, but Symbolism was not limited to France with other practitioners including the Norwegian Edvard Munch, the Austrian Gustav Klimt and the British Aubrey Beardsley.
But what is the book about? A man, Des Essientes, drawn to silence, order and the exhaustion of the senses, tends his exotic plants, studies the classics, travels a little now and again, but always without learning anything of the places he visits or interacting with any of the people there. Other people are abhorrent, they don't understand his own tender sensibilities and therefore they are beneath his notice. He collects beautiful artefacts, gorgeous and expensive paper, for example. As Brendan King writes in the introduction to the new Dedalus edition: "In prioritising the elite over the popular, the singular over the general, and the unique and rare over objects of mass production, Against Nature stood against what Zola and many of the Naturalists considered to be the forces of progress." Des Essientes believed in a hierarchical society, with himself, preferably, at the top. Against Nature was his manifesto - weird, strange and polluted though it might be.
Against Nature displays a profound disgust for women as well as an effete sensibility that rejected `normality' and convention. Huysman's erudite encapsulations of Classical history and literature are marked by a strong sense of the privileged position he was able, by means of his wealth, to attain. This seam of extremism played itself out via the Symbolist movement and it (arguably) reached its peak in the poetry of Maeterlinck and in the art of (among others) Arnold Bocklin and Ferdinand Hodler. As such it is one of the strangest movements in the Modernist era, linking figures as various as Baudelaire and Edward Burne-Jones. The styles of the Symbolist painters varied considerably, but they shared many of the same themes particularly a fascination with the mystical and the visionary. The erotic, the perverse, death and debauchery were of particular interest for the Symbolists. The leading figures of the movement included the two French men, Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin, but Symbolism was not limited to France with other practitioners including the Norwegian Edvard Munch, the Austrian Gustav Klimt and the British Aubrey Beardsley.
But what is the book about? A man, Des Essientes, drawn to silence, order and the exhaustion of the senses, tends his exotic plants, studies the classics, travels a little now and again, but always without learning anything of the places he visits or interacting with any of the people there. Other people are abhorrent, they don't understand his own tender sensibilities and therefore they are beneath his notice. He collects beautiful artefacts, gorgeous and expensive paper, for example. As Brendan King writes in the introduction to the new Dedalus edition: "In prioritising the elite over the popular, the singular over the general, and the unique and rare over objects of mass production, Against Nature stood against what Zola and many of the Naturalists considered to be the forces of progress." Des Essientes believed in a hierarchical society, with himself, preferably, at the top. Against Nature was his manifesto - weird, strange and polluted though it might be.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Brilliant
This is a rapturous affront against dull conformity and hypocritical moral pretensions. In this story of a man Das Esseintes who, sick of the inanity of common existence and of... Read more
Published on 9 May 2010 by demola
A Rebours
I can honestly say that I have never met anyone with a bad word to say against Huysmans decadent novel, 'Against Nature'. Read more
Published on 4 Mar 2010 by L.A.M
Against Nature
First of all it should be stated clearly that if you like a book with a ripping plot then you should stay clear of 'Against Nature'. Read more
Published on 13 April 2009 by Caratacus
True Art
For those looking for a great tale of adventure,intrigue or any other discernible genre stay away.
This book has a very very brief plot but that is the beauty of it. Read more
This book has a very very brief plot but that is the beauty of it. Read more
Published on 12 Mar 2009 by Mr. S. D. O'neill
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